Beyond The WordPress Comment Box
Posted by Sharon Hurley Hall on November 16th, 2009
There’s nothing wrong with the comment box in a default WordPress installation, but there’s nothing very exciting about it, either.
Upgrades to WordPress over the last couple of years have made the comment area more interesting, with gravatars and threaded comments, but these days bloggers often want even more functionality from the comments area.
More specifically, they want to be able to interact with readers through a variety of social sites. That’s why alternative comment management systems are coming into their own. Two of the best known are Disqus and IntenseDebate, with JS-Kit Echo also making a strong showing.
JS-Kit Echo
JS-Kit Echo describes itself as the “next generation commenting system”, but there’s one major hurdle to get over before you try it - the cost. At $12 a year, it’s not expensive, but why would you pay for managing blog comments? One of the reasons is that using Echo means that your readers can use different social media accounts (Google, Friendfeed, Twitter, Haloscan, OpenID, Yahoo, Blogger) to comment on your site. Also, it works whether you blog with WordPress, Blogger, Drupal or other blogging systems.
Echo is a great way to collect reactions to your content from across the web (like Backtype Connect), and to get photo and video comments on your blog. Finally, you can pre-approve people you trust so that their comments are automatically shown. However, it would be nice to use the WordPress dashboard for comment moderation, rather than the JS-Kit site.
IntenseDebate
Intense Debate comes from Automattic so it’s no surprise that it integrates well with WordPress. Readers can use login credentials from Twitter, Facebook and more, while blog owners can manage comments in a variety of ways: through the WordPress dashboard, on the Intense Debate site, or by email. This does not always work completely smoothly (sometimes you have to approve comments twice) but generally it’s a decent system.
As you would expect it integrates well with Aksimet, reducing the amount of spam you see and readers will find it easy to tweet their comments for wider sharing on the social networks.
Disqus
Disqus is the only comment system I haven’t tried personally, but it is well thought of by users. Like the other commenting systems, it works on a variety of blogging platforms, and allows readers to comment using credentials from different sites. It connects comments from a range of social sites through links with BackType and Ubervu, enabling real time conversation. I’ve used Disqus as a blog commenter and have been impressed.
Which system should you choose? Here are some of the ways to decide:
- Don’t want to pay? Choose Intense Debate or Disqus
- Want to make sure comments are retained if you uninstall? Choose Intense Debate or Echo
- Want to integrate comments from many social streams? Choose Echo or Disqus
Whichever you choose, all the comment systems will give your readers an enhanced commenting experience.
This post was submitted by Sharon Hurley Hall from Get Paid To Write Online.com.
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